1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to interjecting messages into a real-time isochronous discourse between a plurality of users and, more particularly, to interjecting advertising messages into phone conversations with the advertisements being directed to the subject matter of the conversation.
2. Description of Related Art
The seminal importance of the telephone as a generalized communication medium has been clear from the very outset. In contrast to the Internet, which is an asynchronous (random delay) communication media, the telephone is an isochronous (fixed delay) channel. What this means is that while the latency of a given packet of information on the Internet is random, and could (potentially) be infinite, the latency in the telephone-model is predetermined and fixed. In the telephone model, fixed latency is desirable because information is generally sent in regulated streams of data (as opposed to random bursts), and because the conversation is live, and thus dependent upon smooth flow and continuity.
Despite the popularity of real-time communication using the telephone-model, the implications of this paradigm for dynamic and automated commercial advertising purposes have largely been overlooked. Most advertising using the telephone model takes the form of telemarketing or soliciting customers by explicitly placing personal (or, in some cases, prerecorded) calls to them. Current day advertising using the telephone-model typically involves calling a random sample of potential consumers, chosen probabalistically from some set, and presenting them with an advertisement of premeditated content and form. This is a crude, non-scalable, and an expensive approach of questionable efficacy.
Efforts have been made to somewhat alter how the advertising is presented so as to increase its relevance to the telephone caller. The most notable example of this is the case of “hold” recordings. Often upon calling a company, the caller is placed “on hold” for a certain amount of time, until a service representative becomes available. During the time the caller is “holding” he or she may be exposed to prerecorded audio advertisements which attempt to inform the caller about the organization, the scope of its operations, and about specific product offerings that the user is likely to be interested in. For example, a person calling an airline for ticket reservations when put on hold will be told about “hot airfare deals” while he or she is waiting for an agent to personally service their request. Such rate information is likely to be of interest to the caller who, presumably, is calling to buy an airline ticket.
Bearing in mind the problems and deficiencies of the prior art, it is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a method for interjecting messages into a real-time isochronous discourse between a plurality of users.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method for interjecting advertising messages into telephone conversations which advertising messages are specifically directed to the subject of the conversation.
A further object of the invention is to provide a system for interjecting messages into a real-time isochronous discourse between a plurality of users.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a system for injecting advertising messages into telephone conversations which messages are specifically directed to the subject of the conversation.
It is an additional object of the present invention to provide a program storage device readable by a machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the machine to perform method steps for interjecting messages into a real-time isochronous discourse between a plurality of users.
It is another object of the invention to provide a program storage device readable by machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by a machine to perform method steps for interjecting advertising messages into telephone conversations which advertising messages are specifically directed to the subject of the conversation.
Still other objects and advantages of the invention will in part be obvious and will in part be apparent from the specification.